While largely unknown today, many consider Msgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton as the greatest theologian the United States has ever produced. In the mid-20th century, he was a huge figure within the American Church, editing the premiere theological journal of the country and doing battle with the forces of modernism which were already becoming more and more bold in their efforts to redefine the Faith according to the “synthesis of all heresies” which they held.

Some of Fenton’s most pointed battles were against Fr. John Courtney Murray, SJ, a favorite of the Kennedy clan and the man who many consider to be the father of the Church’s post-conciliar ecumenical ethos. Murray was especially influential in developing the Vatican II document Dignitatis Humanae, which discusses matters such as religious liberty and the necessity of the Church for salvation in truly unprecedented ways. Unfortunately for the Church and millions of souls, while many observers felt that Fenton had clearly defeated Murray in their numerous theological engagements in the Catholic press, it was Murray whose influence was far more decisive at Vatican II. Once the Council turned decisively towards revolutionary sentiments in the first session, casting aside the years of previous work in the various schema that had been produced before the Council, and which had been championed by Cardinal Ottaviani and his staff of peritus (including Msgr. Fenton), Fenton’s influence on the Council waned as dramatically as did that of the deliberately publicly humiliated Ottaviani.

At any rate, the principle point of disagreement between Fenton and Murray, among others, was on the necessity of the Church for salvation and the paramount need for souls to be within that Church. This spilled over into a closely related point: whether the American form of government with its “freedom of religion” (really, formally enshrined agnosticism as the state religion) was ideal, suitable, or even permissible for Catholics to support. Murray’s vision was much more Americanist in nature, not quite indifferentism but certainly close to what has become the reality in the post-conciliar Church.

In contrast, what we read below is fully in line with the Doctrine of the Faith as handed down through the ages, and fitted for the understanding of contemporary man. I pray that one day the Church return not only to a full appreciation of Fenton’s work, but also to its implementation in a general reinstitution of classical scholastic theology. The following excerpts come from The Church of Christ: A Collection of Essays by Msgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton, pp. 299-301. I add my own comments:

The anti-Catholic agitators are continually charging that Catholics are striving to do away with freedom of religion in the United States. [As for me, guilty as charged.] In answering these men, some of our less skillful apologists [what a nice dig at Murray!] become so confused that they actually give the impression that Catholics are completely and absolutely satisfied with the situation here in the United States today, that we believe it to be the best that many of our fellow citizens should remain as they are, apart from Our Lord, from His Church, and from His true religion. Unmindful of the constant and devoutly sincere prayer of the Church that all of those who wander apart from ecclesiastical union and fellowship with Christ should be brought by God’s Grace into that fellowship, [A prayer repeated at every Good Friday in the TLM, but one which the vast majority of Catholics today have probably never heard] these writers describe as ultimately good and satisfactory a situation in which the nation itself takes no more cognizance of the true religion than it does of false systems of worship…….

……….We would by denying the force of that missionary charity within the Church, or misjudging the nature of the Church itself, were we in any way to give the impression that we do not care whether our fellow Americans enter the true Church or not. The true religion is the great good which we desire for our fellow citizens and for our country. The true Church, outside of which there is no salvation, is likewise a great and necessary good we seek for the men and the nation we love in the affection of charity.

………..The Vatican Council’s [That would be Vatican I] first dogmatic constitution, Dei Filius…..declares that “If anyone should say that the faithful and those who have never arrived at the only true faith are in a like situation, so that Catholics can have a legitimate reason for withholding their assent from and doubting, until they shall have completed the scientific proof of the credibility and the truth of their own faith, that faith which they have already received under the Church’s Magisterium, let him be anathema.” [Wow, a council that levels anathemas. Wonders never cease.] The third chapter of this constitution declares that “those who have received the faith under the Church’s Magisterium can never have any legitimate cause for changing that faith or doubting it.” [Et tu, Francesco?]

………The thesis that the state or the civil society is objectively obligated to worship God according to the Rite of the Catholic religion thus stems basically from a realization of the fact that the debt of religion is a real obligation incumbent upon every human being and every social unit, and from a recognition of the truth that there is only one objectively acceptable religious worship, that which is paid to God within the framework of Our Lord’s Mystical Body. This thesis is likewise in line with the fundamental principle of Catholic missiology, the truth that God wills that all men should enter His one true Church. Thus it refuses to see as genuinely and ultimately desirable and good a situation in which some men, even though through no fault of their own, are not citizens of God’s supernatural kingdom on earth.

————End Quote————

Let me know if the excerpts don’t quite form a cohesive whole. I’m out of time and really wanted to get this post out but may have taken out a bit much “meat.”

The practical implementation of Dignatitis Humanae and the cult of false ecumenism it has engendered (for the only true ecumenism, contra the previous pontiff, is what he called “the discredited ecumenism of return” to the faith) is probably the second greatest wound to the Church unleashed in the decades since Vatican II, after Sacrosanctum Concilium. The latter attempts to rip out her heart, the former, her mind. No wonder the Church’s missionary efforts have totally collapsed in the years since. They were intended to. The revolutionaries – whether they intended to be or not – could not have chosen their targets better. It is a bitter shame better men like Fenton did not succeed, but I have to accept that God allowed all this to come to pass, for some reason.

This story did not get much coverage, but has the potential to be huge. It will almost invariably lead to endless appeals and an end to the anonymous jury system, with jurors being investigated after the fact for any beliefs that might exonerate those found guilty of crimes. It also fits in perfectly with the general left-wing assault on civil liberties ranging from practice of Christianity to freedom of speech to freedom of association. Now jurors can be publicly excoriated if they are found to have uttered something politically incorrect at any point prior to or during a trial involving some “minority.”

Naturally, “Catholic” Anthony Kennedy sided with the Supreme Court’s left-wing minority to decide the issue. He is the most powerful man in America by a long shot, and was never elected to so much as dog catcher:

A recent Supreme Court ruling turns criminal justice on its head, putting the jury on trial for political incorrectness and letting the criminals run free. Pena-Rodriguez v. Colorado is utter lunacy:

After a Colorado jury convicted a Mexican man of sexual harassment, two jurors signed affidavits that a retired police officer on the jury had expressed racial animus during deliberations. The juror was reported to have stated that “nine times out of 10 Mexican men were guilty of being aggressive toward women and young girls,” among other slurs. The defendant’s counsel sought to overturn the conviction based on racial animus but was denied by the trial judge.[Who declares that statement to be a slur? It might be wrong, it might be a slur, but it could also be a mere statement of fact. Who gets to decide what constitutes a slur? Yet another power acceded to an unelected, unaccountable jurist?]

Civilization has been protected from verdicts being retroactively nullified due to alleged flaws of the jurors for centuries, thanks to the no-impeachment rule rooted in English common law.

As Justice Anthony Kennedy explained in the 5-3 majority opinion this week in Pena-Rodriguez v. Colorado, the rule “promotes full and vigorous discussion by jurors by providing considerable assurance that after being discharged they will not be summoned to recount their deliberations” or otherwise harassed. It also “gives stability and finality to verdicts.”

Yet Justice Kennedy joined the Court’s four liberals in Pena-Rodriguez to overturn that standard for accusations of racial bias. [Remember, Anthony Kennedy was the man possessed of the god-like power to peer into the souls of tens of millions of Americans opposed to so-called same-sex marriage, and find nothing but bigotry and blind animus. This is the creature that decides the fate of hundreds of millions of people.]

What exactly constitutes “racial bias” that should result in the verdict being overturned? The Supremes don’t say, guaranteeing endless appeals on grounds of alleged juror political incorrectness.

Presumably it will still be possible to incarcerate white male heterosexual Christian criminals. All other guilty verdicts are likely to be held up indefinitely while the jurors are retroactively investigated for any indication of ideological impropriety.

The ruling is a step toward corrupting juries with political standards based on the progressive obsessions with race, gender and class.

Beyond that, it is a step toward reducing our legal system to a dysfunctional farce.

Indeed. If there is an extreme imbalance in the failing US constitutional system of checks and balances, it is in the judiciary. Every single leftist advance in the culture, going back decades, has come from the judiciary, not the people themselves. Even constitutional amendments have been found “unconstitutional.” Basically anything a left-leaning judge does not like can be found to be unconstitutional, and rationalized on the most ephemeral of precepts: emanations from the penumbras, and all that. Amazing.

As far as turning the legal system into a dysfunctional farce, to those who want to see the United States, as it has been, destroyed, this is a feature, not a bug. Anything that undermines people’s support for the USA That Was is good to them, as they think it will bring forth their much longed for revolution.

Of course, the vast majority of the people longing for revolution today will be among the first lined up and shot should it occur. Along with millions of other relative innocents.

Interesting video by Stefan Molyneux below, and one that is most timely for my family. To make matters bearable for my wife, we “paired up” my oldest and 2nd oldest daughters, born 18 months apart, into the same school grade when the started kindergarten many years ago. This made eminent sense, as the twins came after these two and would constitute their own grade. So my oldest daughter started homeschooling at age 6 while the next was 4.

But what that also means is that I will have two girls graduating high school the same year, 2018. For a long time, however, we have had the strong sense that our oldest daughter was not destined for college, while her younger sister was much more likely to go. And that’s very much turned out to be the case. Our oldest might go to community college or get a 2 year degree in some kind of artistic field. Her sister, however, is taking the standardized tests and doing really very well. She might wind up with a better score than any I was able to attain by the time she’s done.

Right now, however, she’s leaning towards a natural science degree, in a “hard science” like biology. While she’ll probably attend UD – which is her school of choice – I kind of view a BS in natural science as sort of the floor for a major that makes getting a degree worthwhile, economically. Especially when you factor in the fact that UD is a private university. I’m also leery of biology as a degree, even at a fairly Catholic uni like UD, because the field of biology is eaten up with the cult of evolution.

The commentary from Stefan Molyneux plays into this thesis. It makes me want to encourage her exploring engineering a bit more, perhaps biomedical engineering as a cousin she is close to is majoring in right now at UT-San Antonio. But J really wants to stay close to home. We’ll see.

I have been pretty upfront with my kids, however. If they want to get a degree, it needs to be in some field where there is a reasonable payout for the hideous expense involved, be it finance, compsci, engineering, hard science, management information systems, or whatever. Otherwise, they better get pretty close to a full ride scholarship, or it ain’t happening. I am also hopeful that online degrees of low cost but sufficient gravitas really begin to emerge as my kids enter college. That might be another alternative.

It is a brilliant point to bring up the fact that making college “free” would have the direct effect of radically reducing the worth of having a college degree – about akin to a high school diploma today. Then an entire new level of credentialization would have to emerge to replace what college is today – be it post-graduate degrees or something beyond PhD.

Interestingly, that is why my alma mater – The University of Texas – has fought for years to keep its enrollment below 50,000, with about 30-35,000 of those being undergrads (of whom maybe 60-70% actually graduate with a degree). They have done this for several reasons – limitations of space as an urban university, funding limitations, etc., but also because they want the degrees to have a certain value. At present, UT graduates about 7-8000 undergraduates a year. There are typically about 300-400,000 living graduates at any one time. If UT did what A&M is doing, which is expanding to 70,000-80,000 or beyond, they would produce twice as many graduates and potentially reduce the value of their degrees.

It is exceedingly odd for me to say this, though it is a sense I have had developing over the past several years (college not being worth the expense in many degree fields, in addition to being a source of very dangerous indoctrination). My parents were the first people in both of their families to ever get college degrees, though my mom did not get hers until she was nearly 40. My brother and sister and I all went to college as a matter of course. My wife’s experience is similar. And yet she only used her degree professionally for a few years before graduating to full time motherhood (which may well be the case for most of my daughters). Here I feel like I am turning my back on something that has been taken for granted as a critical part of the ascent to the upper middle class in this country for generations.

Yet, there are fewer and fewer reasons to obtain degrees of exponentially increasing cost. There are sources of learning available anywhere in the world today that were unimaginable when I was of college age. The college experience is increasingly dangerous for souls. I just had the lamentable tale related to me a few days ago of a father whose daughter was totally lost in the sexular pagan leftist zeitgeist, a zeitgeist she absorbed while a student at Oklahoma University, of all places. There are very few intellectually and morally “safe” colleges. I strongly recommend children either go to a college they can attend while living at home, or living with family that can be trusted implicitly.

Lots of factors. Lots of opportunities for soul-crushing mistakes. Err on the side of caution. Perhaps more specifically, err on the side of what is the safest route morally and ecclesiastically, even if that involves something of an economic penalty. Easy for me to say, however.

I really meant to post this on the weekend, or at least on Monday, but events conspired to prevent me from doing either.

Starting Friday night, I began to see videos on Youtube from the Fatima Center highlighting an upcoming atrocity in Rome – the opening of St. Peter’s for Anglican “Evensong” prayers on Monday, March 13 – the fourth anniversary of the election – God knows why – of Bergoglio to the papacy. Fatima Center did a really good job highlighting why this event was so novel, so egregious, and then took steps to mobilize the faithful in resistance.

Unfortunately, the Vatican kept this event intentionally buried, never publicizing it on any of their PR arms (newspaper, radio, website, etc). It had to be found on the website of the tiny Anglican community in Rome. Thus, it was found out late, when there was very little time to mobilize opposition, which I am quite certain was why it was so little publicized. Nevertheless, efforts were made to stop the event, which did, however, go on.

Two videos below, one explaining the event and how it ties in with the overhaul of ecumania occurring under the pontificate of Francis – especially in this both great and dark anniversary year of 2017 – and the other featuring Chris Ferrara, who explains its dark significance. Of course, Anglicans lack valid orders and thus any liturgical simulation they perform anywhere, but especially in St. Peter’s, amounts to sacrilege. Allowing sacrilege within the very Basilica of St. Peter is simply breathtaking in its blasphemy. Ferrara explains how the cult of ecumenism is ultimately behind this latest abomination.

Sorry I did not get this coverage out before the event took place, but I haven’t seen this covered in many other places, so I thought it deserved a post, regardless:

Now Ferrara’s commentary:

And, as usual, so far as I am aware, no cardinals or bishops publicly condemned this ecumenical confab before it occurred. I am aware of few priests who did. I’m sure more will as they become aware of it, but both the indifference and information security on this were really tight.

Earlier this week, a crazed female politician improbably elected to office proposed a bill that would fine men for such acts as sexual self abuse and impose “restrictions” on vasectomies. While her reasoning in beyond specious and reveals both a deep self-loathing and an immense jealousy of men, and while some aspects would require the erection (so to speak) of a massively invasive totalitarian state literally observing men’s every move in public or private, as a Catholic, I am not, in principle, opposed to much of what she advocates for below. However, the logic behind these proposals is, quite literally, insane, and reveals a very great deal about how divorced from reality left-wing rhetoric has become.

The politician, not incidentally, is from Texas, showing that whatever benefits there are to being in the Lone Star State, we have a disturbing number of crazies:

House Bill 4260, titled “Man’s Right to Know Act,” would require men to pay $100 fee for masturbating each time; require someone seeking a vasectomy, Viagra prescription, or colonoscopy to receive an informational booklet (complete with artistic illustration of each procedure), undergo a digital rectal exam and rectal sonogram and wait 24 hours to get the prescription or procedure; and allow health professionals the right to withhold treatment based on “personal, moralistic, or religious beliefs.”

The bill intentionally draws from anti-abortion laws in Texas, including legislation mandating a 24-hour waiting period for women seeking an abortion and the requirement that during their initial consultation, women receive an error-filled booklet about the risks associated with the procedure.

Hah hah hah you’re soooo clever and funny! What a great way to send up those repressed Christofascists telling women what to do with their bodies!

Of course, you have to completely overlook the fact that, in the case of an abortion, it’s not just the woman’s body, but also the body of a life inside her, that is in question. And that tiny fact not only obliterates the “wit” of this “sendup,” it also makes things like a 24 waiting period seem rather like very much a bare minimum, instead of being some onerous imposition.

The supposed “errors” of the booklet, by the way, are only errors if one takes unsubstantiated and largely disproved pro-abort rhetoric as fact.

So we can see this is just more virtue signaling and point-scoring from the tribe that lives and dies by its standing within the great leftist herd. We can also see how the Left tries to equate the brutal murder by dismemberment or chemical scalding of an infant with a “routine procedure” like a colonoscopy.

And finally note how the radfem tries to portray very minor limitations on the wholesale murder of babies that occurs in our country as seemingly random, clumsy, and unrelated hoops that “good women seeking abortions” must jump through. The truth is, they no better, but have to pretend all objections to abortion are somehow insane.

But what about the fines for self abuse? Leaving aside the fact that monitoring and enforcement would require the creation of a Big Brother like police state, I would not mind at all seeing a broad cultural pushback against the normalization of porn use and self-abuse which has emerged over the last several decades. I also would like to see vasectomies not accompanied by stupid, unnecessary, persecutory procedures, but made completely illegal. Here I think the feminist errs, as I don’t think a lot of men have a burning desire to undergo the procedure, but generally do so only under heavy pressure from their spouse. At least, the 5, ahem, Catholic fathers I knew who had the procedure all done around the same time were more or less pushed into having it done by their wives.

What of Viagra? The commercials make watching most sports impossible, and much of the use is based on want, and not need. My preference would be to see it simply banned. At the very least, how about tying the procreative act, to, you know, procreation, and thus limiting the use of such chemicals – whose long term effects are still largely unknown – to those men in a position to father and responsibly raise young children, e.g., the married? There is also of course a unitive aspect to the act which is also only suitable for marriage.

So, see how reasonable I am? I can even find the good in the most unhinged, unserious proposals from the far left.